


Daymare

by Auritas



Category: The Last Unicorn - All Media Types
Genre: Angst and Tragedy, Gen, One-Shot, but it's not terrifyingly intense yknow?, so somewhat canon divergent, somewhat (heavily) inspired by the unicorn quartet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-14
Updated: 2018-08-14
Packaged: 2019-06-27 06:29:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15679881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Auritas/pseuds/Auritas
Summary: The first and the last.(If it makes any sense, she was, in fact, the last before she was the first.)~Dreams can never be fully drowned out, and nightmares even more so.(edited from the original version on FFN but no major changes.)





	Daymare

**Author's Note:**

> Original FFN version can be found here: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/10569910/1/Daymare. 
> 
> (To be quite honest, though, I'd just stick to this one. My writing's changed a bit since then, haha)
> 
> Enjoy! This was edited as a break from my other writing obligations, and I very thoroughly enjoyed going over a piece I'd poured so much of my heart into.

The first and the last.

(If it makes any sense, she was, in fact, the last before she was the first.)

* * *

There's a story I hear often, passed around the ring huddled before a fire or whispered to an eager cluster at wearied feet. A story about a girl and a forest, of magic and the night sea.

Pulling, pulling, ever pulling. It really is a surprise that no one has yet been completely dismembered by all the voices crying out their name. 

I can't complain, not exactly; not when that is the exact thing keeping me around, abound, aground. Keeping me alive.

Still—

Never did I find myself in one place for so long. 

* * *

The story always tells of a young girl who, as many girls in fairy-tales did, had a cruel stepmother and a distant father who, to his merits, did work hard—but forgot his daughter in his work, as much as he did love her. 

Which left the horses.

Every time, the storytellers come back to this: how she adored them impossibly, tended to them to their luxury in their shabby fields with an impossibly immense heart, lavished them with the care and tenderness she never felt but somehow, ever impossibly, knew. A girl and her horses. 

(Inseparable.)

Beyond the barrening fields lay a forest, brimming with half-seen flocks and flickers of herds. She would often linger at the edge of it, gazing into its shadow-lit depths, wondering what creatures walked the sun-dappled earth. There was no rhyme or reason to it, no  _why_ s or  _how_ s: all she knew was that there was a silent voice that turned her name into the sole lyric of its siren's song. If she could, she would stand there forever, staring and staring, searching for something that wasn't always there.

And here the storytellers would pause, stretching bated breath, before adding:

But one day, it was.

She had the horses with her that day—just leading two of them for a stroll, a pearly gray mare and her pitch-black foal. A pleasure walk that nailed two birds with one stone: She could exercise the horses, as she was bound to anyway, and she could also catch a glimpse of the mysterious place her heart so longed for.

And there—

_there_

—a flash.

A mistake?

She thought that, perhaps, her eyes had deceived her. That it was merely a very bright reflection of light off some unseen pool, or perhaps a mirror lost, or a stray glass shard.  _A trick of the sun's rays,_  she thought to herself, trying to turn away but not quite managing it; her eyes were fixed, impossibly enraptured—

Another.

Only, it wasn't simply a flash this time: it held still. Shock-white, almost glowing against its backdrop of shadowy forest. Yet somehow it was soft, achingly worn to velvet at the edges, with a deer's tread and a bird's leap.

(Impossible.)

She felt herself freeze.

(Impossible, impossible, an impossible deception—)

And then the other appeared.

The mare she held pulled against the lead, blowing from her nostrils in alarm. Her foal shrilled and the girl heard the thud of hooves as one of the horses bucked.

* * *

Here the storyteller always pauses, taking in the wide eyes and shallow breaths of unguarded wonder. The land around them, every time, falls silent and waiting, always knowing what had emerged from the forest, always knowing this was its sole saving grace, always knowing that without this the land would be dying.

(No, dead.)

* * *

"Unicorns," the girl breathed.

And unicorns they were indeed: A mother and her foal, both shimmering ghosts, delicate and ancient spirits in the forest. Watching her.

The horses the girl still held pawed the air and whinnied, fear and awe laced through their cries. The girl, yanked out of her reverie, turned away from the unicorns and soothed them, singing a lilting song under her breath.

Unseen, the unicorns' ears pricked at the girl's wandering notes.

The gray mare eyed them warily, her foal shied away.

The girl sang.

* * *

In every story, no matter which variation, the girl eventually must leave the mystical creatures. In every story, the tale ends in heartbreak, and the girl continues her wounded life blindly roaming the forest or stumbling deaf through empty years spent in the town—always, always calling for her unicorns to come back. To prove they were more than dreams and mirages cast from the forest's depths, that they were breathing and solid and walking and alive, alive,  _alive_.

(They never did.)

The creatures would become living nightmares for the girl, pitied by the rest of the town; and they would mourn her, the mad girl lost to her daymares.

Every story, except one.

One teller ends it differently, every time. One teller creates a beginning from an ending.

One teller tells the truth.

(Me.)

* * *

The two unicorns did disappear that day, never to return. But that was the tale in the realm of stark reality; instead, they came back to her in the realm of dreams, when the moon was high and its light splashed through her window and lit her face. She saw the stars first, then the endless wine-dark sea, and in the sea's roiling deep she saw the unicorns emerging, dancing on the foam and shining pearl-white through the waves.

 _The last,_  they whispered.  _We are no more. Become one of us, become the last, or hope is lost to the world..._

 _What do I have to do?_ she cried, her eyes filling with its own seas at the anguish in their voices.

 _Jump,_ they answered.  _Jump to us, then touch the stars. ...Escape to the sky, where no bull will ever reach you._

And so she plunged into that heaving sea, and reached a hand upwards to the diamond-scattered sky. 

(Impossible.)

* * *

 

She awoke to find herself in her beloved forest, in a body that Death would never touch. Her mind had changed, and so had her soul—she felt it.

And yet.

And yet, the more she dwelt upon the thought, the more she become convinced that her previous life as a girl had merely been a dream. 

 _A dream,_  she told herself, standing. She gazed at the rolling green hills, at the willows bending to the pool, at the flowers singing with bursting color. A forest that had always been, and always will be. 

_A dream, a nightmare. Nothing more_ _._

And the last unicorn glided to the water's edge for a long, cool drink.

* * *

That, of course, is no longer the case.

* * *

She did return—eventually. She came slowly, hesitant, at twilight, and only after long wanderings through the towns; after a fruitless search for another something her heart so longed for.

No. Not a search. She knew where it lay, the thing she was looking for.

(And she knew it would be impossible to call her own.)

 _Unicorns do not regret. Unicorns can only sorrow. Unicorns do not regret,_ she kept telling herself, insistent. But her heart would retort its pain, her mind would relinquish its grip, and the memories would rush back as living daymares, and she would moan and shrill and strike the air as if her hooves could somehow dent the hurt that lingered in the air around her. 

And here she knew:  _But I do. I_  do _regret, and remember, and, and now... Part of me is human. Human forever.  
_

I was solidly placed in her heart by then. Not to the depth of submissive invasion, but she knew I was there and knew she could do nothing to be rid of me.

I looked on, as I have since creation.

 _I regret, I regret, I regret,_  her heart sang, my voice a whisper twined in its cry, fueling its voice. I looked on as she brought eternal spring back to her forest, as she stood by the pool and looked not into it, but gazed at a vacant place across the water, where someone had once stood with her.

 _I am the first to feel regret. Unicorns do not regret... But I_ do _._

She closed her eyes and sank to the grass, still trying to see what was no longer there.

* * *

Over time, she forgets that as well. Unicorns are forever, but daymares, however strong, are doomed to fade. And when it does, she remembers nothing of the humans and the Bull and the faint cries of her heart. The world is simply this: her, her forest, her animals, and, whenever the thought occurs, the other unicorns.

Sometimes the dreams come back and attack her, and she freezes, remembering and remembering and crying without tears. She screams. The birds fall silent and the forest's eyes blink out of sight. She is then alone, alone with a lost past. And she feels me gnawing at her heart, her mind, her body.

(And, impossibly, she longs for that thing that cannot touch her.)

But when the night comes, I would be gone and she would go on, keeping her forest green until the end of forever. Slowly, I begin to visit less and less, until I am no more than a fleeting wisp, too quick to be caught and examined. But whenever I do appear, she slowly jolts to a halt, her eyes shadowed in defeat, her mane and tail limp around her in failing comfort—human, for half a moment.

And in the next heartbeat, I am gone.

* * *

Even so: It was the first time I had been in the heart of a unicorn.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope y'all enjoyed! 
> 
> (Psssst I live off kudos n comments pls feed me)
> 
> Wanna screech with me, at me, to me? I’m @aurltas (that's a lowercase L) on tumblr and twitter!


End file.
